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chilling with the wonderpets

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Stoke!!!

Up all night with one of my baby dragons!!!

Ssshhhhhhhhhhhh! I salted last night.

Yes, its true, while you were asleep i salted. It was totally quiet except, when intermittently I opened the ports of the kiln to shovel salt and sawdust in my giant inferno. The flames leapt, but the toads kept on croaking and shallow moon hung low. A peaceful Sunday night below the towering snow covered peaks-and the sweet smell of sulphur wafting in the crisp spring air.

It has been at least a month since my last post and life has been delivering plenty of powerful gusts. I am in the midst of concreting my whole upstairs, an overwhelming project. My whole front yard was ambushed by a bulldozer in search of a broken water line and we have bandits on the prowl breaking into many of the artisan shops that litter Northern Taos. Oh yeah and my kiln decided that it needed a little TLC in the way of some rusted out pilots and safety valves.

However, Mercury is finally out of retrograde, so i hear. Projects are winding down and problems have been resolved. I am optimistic, tonight completes a salt firing and I will be wood firing the next two weeks. I will continue burning the midnight oil and throw myself into making forms that embellish the refinements of their former selves.

The quest continues for the quench of satisfaction in a divinely made object.

Foil Saggar Blues

I have been doing a ferric chloride foil saggar firing today and yesterday. Due to some cracking I'm going to switch to a porcelain slip instead a porcelain clay body. The color is nice and rich but, the process is too risky for such a fine clay. Here is a picture of one of the pots coming out of the kiln.

April Wood Firing

I am posting a few pics of our recent wood firing which we unloaded today. It was roughly a 36 hour firing with John Bradford and Scott Rutherford.We had 50 mph gusts in the beginning but, managed to achieve cone 10-12 in the entire kiln. We decide to soda 3 pounds in the back and a pound and a half up front. This is the same kiln we will be using for the workshop in July. There were nice results through out excluding a pink shino that might as well been labeled Pottery Pepto Bismol. Luckily it didn't find its way on to any of my pots. The next firing will be in May and I plan to experiment with some new iron oxides, Croques Martes? and a C-1? and a newman red clay on a coleman Porcelain with which I've had excellent results in the charcoal kiln. I plan to do a salt firing for our Earth day show which you can learn more about on my facebook page. I will also be doing some large saggars this week and hope to get the gallery dish rack fully stocked by next week with my white sepia shino line.